


Aries

by equilateralSeamstress



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Humanstuck, this is shitty i apologize
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-24
Updated: 2013-04-24
Packaged: 2017-12-09 08:24:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/772115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/equilateralSeamstress/pseuds/equilateralSeamstress
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I didn't understand what could be so bad about a girl that didn't like to wear pink and liked playing in the mud and getting dirty. Even the boys didn't like her, and that made me kind of sad. Not just that she didn't have any friends herself, but also that I started losing friends. I didn't know why.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aries

It happened on such short notice. It's not that I didn't foresee that something like this could happen. It might have been that I just really didn't want something like this to happen. I'm not the only person that knew about it; news traveled fast in my school. And if kids didn't want to talk to me before for befriending a Megido, they sure as hell didn't want to after she died.

I was in the third grade when I met Aradia. She had curly hair the color of chocolate and matching eyes with long, thick eyelashes. As girly as she looked by herself, her face and clothes were constantly covered in dirt, mud, and god knows what else. In this way she was different than any other girl I knew. All the other girls hated getting dirty. Except for Nepeta. She was a wild animal all throughout elementary school. But Aradia just wasn't afraid to explore and get her hands dirty. I liked that.

One day I found her with a plastic spoon from the cafeteria, digging a hole into a mud puddle. Smiling and full of hope, my knobby-kneed, "s" slurring self decided to approach her.

"Whatcha doing?" I asked her. She looked up at me with the widest grin I've ever seen on an eight year old.

"Diiiiggiiiiing," she replied, returning to deepen her hole. I knelt down next to her.

"What for?" I wanted to know.

"Cause I can," she explains. "Maybe I'll find something and I can give it to my mommy. If I find some other stuff, you could give some to your mommy."

Hate to admit it, but I cringed. It turned out she was one of the few kids who didn't know my home situation. For those of you who don't know, I was adopted by a same-sex couple before I turned a year old. They were the only parents I knew, and treated them as such. I loved my dads as any other kid would love their parents, but kids would laugh at me because their parents had taught them it was "wrong".

"I can give 'em to my daddies," I suggested. "I don't have a mommy."

She looked back up at me, the grin gone momentarily and that was when I thought "she's going to hate me like everyone else". She examined me inquisitively for a moment before grinning again.

"I think they'll like them too. Daddies like pretty stuff sometimes."

\--------

As time went by, the kids eventually found out about my friendship with Aradia, and they started treating me differently. At first they would treat me somewhat civilly despite my parents being not what they expected, but after befriended Aradia, they pretended I didn't exist. I didn't understand what could be so bad about a girl that didn't like to wear pink and liked playing in the mud and getting dirty. Even the boys didn't like her, and that made me kind of sad. Not just that she didn't have any friends herself, but also that I started losing friends. I didn't know why.

When she asked me to come to her apartment one day in sixth grade, however, I finally got my answers.

Aradia lived on the outskirts of town in a low-income apartment complex whose white noise consisted of screaming and things breaking in the background. She lived with her sister Damara who was seven years her elder and her mother. Her father was separated from them when she was five years old, but she told me that sometimes he came to visit. Her mom would start yelling at him, though, so he, she, and Damara had to go somewhere else when he did see them.

Her mother worked under the leader of a major gang in my neighborhood, and her sister worked as a prostitute to get them extra money. I was shocked when I eventually started to comprehend this. It was a rarity that either of them came home at decent hours in the evening, and Aradia was often left to take care of herself. She'd worn a house key around her neck since she was six. She'd eat by herself, bathe herself, read to herself, and tuck herself in at night.

To be honest, hearing about Aradia's past broke my little heart, and something in me wanted to make a difference. This was when I asked her to come over to my apartment a few blocks down. My place was a little bit better than hers in the sense that there was far less shouting, but there was still the occasional holler. It was a complex no more than four stories high with a parking garage underneath. This was the place that I had called home all my life.

Dad and Pop welcomed her with open arms. They were scared about her situation, even though they never said it out loud or in front of her. But some nights, I'd sneak out of bed, and I'd hear them talking about her, hoping that she and her family were okay. I, as naive as I was in the sixth grade, thought she'd be just fine.

But one late night freshman year changed everything.

Aradia's mom had gotten into trouble with the rivaling gang from the next neighborhood down; threats, insults, the works. They had interrogated the other members to track down her residence and kicked in the door when they found it. Each of the three guys carried weapons, and Aradia's mom had heard them break in. She tried to run to the kitchen to grab a knife, scissors, anything to fend them off. And the bullets started cracking. Damara heard the racket and grabbed Aradia, hoping to escape. But they just hadn't made it in time. Their corpses were brutally mutilated and abused, and left in the streets for unsuspecting passerby's to find.

A memorium was held at school the next day. And by that I mean they had about a minute of silence for the woman that I had loved, and then everyone could get on with their day. The name Megido meant less than nothing to most of the school, and Aradia meant even less.

I cried the night after her funeral. I had truly lost a part of me that I couldn't get back. And when I returned to school the next day, kids were back to pretending I didn't exist, just for fun. They laughed at me constantly, ridiculing me for being the boyfriend of the "dead gang girl". With every fraction of laughter and every passing insult, I eventually stopped crying over it. My heart grew cold and dark to prevent myself from ever getting hurt like that ever again. I didn't need anyone. I told myself I could handle life on my own from that point on.


End file.
